The impulse given to the Art of Illumination in that celebrated establishment was speedily communicated to rival scriptoria in other localities; thus from the abbeys of St. Martial, at Limoges, from Metz, Mans, St. Majour in Provence, Rheims, St. Germain and St. Denis at Paris, issued, from the age of Charlemagne to the 13th century, an almost uninterrupted series of highly-illuminated volumes, many of which still remain to attest the vigorous efforts by which the foreign elements were gradually thrown aside in France, to make way for that expressive and original outline style[56] which achieved its greatest power in the early part of the 13th century. The throes and struggles by which this was achieved, are singularly well shown by a page engraved in Count Bastard's splendid work from the "Apocalypse of St. Sever," written during the first half of the 11th century. The page presents a curious emblematical frontispiece, the general form of which is perfectly Oriental; the border ornaments are founded on Cufic inscriptions; the animals which decorate the Arabian framework are classical; and the interlacing fretwork of several portions of the design is purely Saxon. Many Byzantine features were brought into French illumination through the schools at St. Martial's and the other abbeys of Limoges, but it was at Paris itself that the greatest changes and improvements were effected; thus, at St. Germain and St. Denis were produced, during the first half and middle of the 11th century, two volumes, still existing in the Imperial Library of France, which distinctly show the budding of "Gothic." The St. Germain "Mysteries of the Life of Christ" is illustrated by many original and very spirited outline compositions, some of which are slightly coloured; while the "Missal of St. Denis," of a few years later, displays that peculiar grace and _naïveté_ in the action and expression of the figures, together with that soft elegance in foliated ornament, which for several centuries remained a dominant excellence in the best French illuminations. As classical tradition and Hiberno-Saxon intricacies died out in France to make way for the true Mediæval styles, so did they, although somewhat more slowly, in England, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. In Italy, a degeneracy occurred, from which the revival at length, under Cimabue and Giotto, was as rapid and brilliant as the previous collapse appears to have been fatal.[57] Alike from any such complete change, complete degeneracy, or ultimate attainment of life and perfection, the genuine Greek style of the Byzantine empire was exempted. That Oriental splendour of gold and colour by which so early as the days of Justinian the Great, it sought to gloss over the feebleness of its reminiscences of classical beauty, remained the unchanged leading characteristic of its illuminations down to the final extinction of the empire in 1453.